7 weeks until our Due Date!

...and with Thanksgiving and Christmas, the 7 weeks remaining until our due date is going to FLYYYYY by!  I still feel like we have a lot to do (and buy) so that we are ready for our baby girl.  Her bedroom is coming right along.   We spent some time transforming an Ikea Chandelier from this:

Brushed Nickel Finish

Into this:

Painted white and antiqued...this was a job!!!!

We painted the room a pale pink, and have begun hanging a few decorations that we have bought and/or made.

We have even hung some letters to try to get used to one of the names we like.  Since we are going with a shabby chic style for the room, we thought it would be fun to hang the letters on a clothes line:

 

You can see a little better how the letters are hanging here. 

I still need to re-purpose some photo mattes and install them into picture frames to hang on the wall, as well as hopefully get some more items for the room,  but it is getting there.  

Luke wanted to pose with me for the 33-week belly pic:

 

This will be our first Thanksgiving and Christmas to celebrate away from our families, as our doctor recommended we not travel for Thanksgiving, and of course forbade me to travel on Christmas.  But, it will probably also be our only Thanksgiving and Christmas for a while to celebrate at our own home, so we are going to make it a special time this year and enjoy some local festivities.

I will finish this post with some pictures of Luke.  A few days ago when we got home, we found a used Lego Duplo table at our front door with no note attached--and whoever dropped it off also gave us a bunch of lego duplo blocks.  We were actually thinking about getting some of these for Luke for Christmas, but I know they can be pretty pricey.  So, we were so thankful to be blessed with this gift.  I guess one of our kind neighbors' kids outgrew it and thought Luke might enjoy it--we have no idea who dropped it off though!  I thoroughly cleaned the table and blocks and Luke has been enjoying it ever since.  Thank you kind neighbor, whoever you are! Here are some pics of Luke building some of his "tall towers":

Getting Ready for Baby in between Planned Activities

Drew and I have been so busy lately with various events, in addition to trying to prepare for our baby girl's upcoming arrival.  He knows that whenever he gets home and on the weekend, I have a list of things we need to get done so that everything can get done before she arrives.  I guess this is nesting.

This weekend was no different.  I counted that we completed 8 art/craft projects for our little girl's room, in addition to doing some shopping to purchase some necessities for our baby girl.  This was in between meeting some friends from our church community group for a day-outing at Inks Lake State Park on Saturday and in between the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure that we participated in on Sunday.  It was a wonderful weekend though and we certainly wouldn't change a thing.  Drew and I feel like we got SO much accomplished and had fun along the way.

I am now about 32 weeks pregnant and our baby girl's room is near completion.   We just need to finish hanging all of these art/craft projects that we completed over the weekend and then it should look mostly complete.  One of these projects was a brushed nickel Ikea chandelier light fixture that we decided to paint white and antique to go with our Shabby Chic styled room.  This still needs to be installed.  But, I should be able to share pictures of her room within a couple of weeks.

Our visit to Inks Lake was such a nice outing.  We want to go back after this major drought is over, because you can tell where there are normally some waterfalls and other beautiful scenery.   While we were there, we did some hiking with friends--the weather was perfect and it felt great to get away and get in some exercise between chores.

A family photo.

Luke and his friend Dylan, and mom, Brittnee, looking over the dock at the ducks and fish.

Luke and Daddy after our picnic by the lake.

On Sunday morning, we participated in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure.  I participate in this every year in memory of my Grandmother, who had breast cancer.  I am also the team captain for our Company team, which is usually one of the largest teams at the race.  This year, our team had 120 members--it is awesome to be a part of such a supportive group of people of this worthy cause.  Drew, Luke and I had planned on doing the family mile since I am very pregnant and because we had Luke with us in the jogging stroller--we didn't want to get in the way of the runners.  But, we should have known we wouldn't be able to pass up the opportunity to participate in the 5k once we got there.  We saw the sign for the "Family Mile" turn-off and decided to just keep going on the 5K route.  It felt great and it is always so motivating to run/walk alongside others in a race such as this.   This year there were over 22,000 participants in the race, so there were many others there to keep us motivated.  Luke had a lot to look at to keep him entertained and he was a trooper.  It was so hard to fight the urge not to run when there are others running around you, and I just had to give in a couple of times.  I am definitely looking forward to doing some running and biking after our baby girl is born--something else to look forward to!  :-)

Drew and Luke in front of the State Capitol building at the Race.

Luke's Big Boy Room

Luke is becoming such a big boy!  Two weekends ago (On Friday night) we took apart Luke's crib so that we could move it to his new bedroom and convert it to a toddler bed.  We were a little nervous about the process of transitioning him to a big boy bed, but much to our surprise, he transitioned like a pro!  On the first couple of nights he was a little too excited about his new space and new bed.  In fact, he was so excited that he wanted to check it out instead of sleeping.  So, we ended up putting the pack and play in the room and having him sleep in there.  But, since then he only wants to sleep in his big boy bed.  Last night was night 8 in his big boy bed--and he has slept through the night with no complications on each of the nights.  We are so proud of him.  The pack and play is now back in storage waiting for our baby girl.

Proud of his new bed and room.

Moving Luke to his new room has created additional tasks for us to prepare for the arrival of our baby girl, but it has been well worth it.  We bought Luke a new bookshelf from Ikea (which required some assembly).  Also, instead of decorating just one room (the nursery), moving him into a new room required the decorating of two rooms.   Since we already had the monkey theme going from when he was a baby, we decided to keep that for now (to save money) and slowly transition him to something else when he requests.  Right now though, he doesn't know the difference.  :-)  Here are some pictures of Luke's new space.

He wanted to pose in his new bed for a photo.

Our Halloween Festivities

Spiderman and Batman.  The Spiderman costume came with a mask, but Luke didn't want to wear it.

Last weekend, we made a short trip to the Houston area to visit Drew's family.  We figured it may be our last trip for a while, since we are only 10 weeks from our baby's due date.

While we were there, we had a lot of fun with family.  We took advantage of some Halloween/Fall festivals on Saturday, celebrated Luke's birthday and watched Luke's cousins, Audrey and Lauren perform a dance routine.

On Halloween, we were back in Austin and Luke took part in his first trick-or-treating ever.  Our friends, Jennifer and Michael and their daughter, Krystal, joined us as we visited houses in our neighborhood.  Krystal is only a month older than Luke, so it was her first time to trick-or-treat also.   It was so entertaining watching them figure it out together.

As you can probably guess from the picture at the top of this post, we decided to take on the super-heroes theme this year as a family.  After Drew and I put on our costumes, we regretted the decision to dress as super heroes and visit our neighbors, but pushed through it anyway.   I think last year's costume idea would have been a better fit for me this year.  Here is last year's family costume:

Being pregnant as Mario would have been much better for me than pregnant as bat girl.  Oh well.  Here is a slideshow of some pictures of our Halloween festivities.  The slideshow moves pretty quickly, but you can pause it and move through it manually to see the captions.

A Foodie's Dream!

Last weekend, we took a break between tackling all of the chores on our to-do list and made our way to the Austin Gypsy Picnic (Food Truck Festival) to grab some lunch.  Drew and I consider ourselves "foodies", with some of our favorite television shows residing on the food network.  Also, one of our favorite past-times (at least pre-Luke) was to try new restaurants and dishes.  So, this was loads of fun for us! 

Over 35 of Austin's finest food trailers were there to showcase their most popular offerings.  We loved that they offered "samples" (which I must say seemed more like a normal portion to me) for just a couple of dollars.  This allowed us to try several trucks and even split some dessert.
 

 
We loved everything we tasted.  But, our favorite thing was our dessert.  We ordered some "mini" ice cream sammies from the Coolhaus food truck that were amazing.   We had a chocolate chip cookie/sea salt caramel ice cream sammie and a chocolate chocolate cookie/mint ice cream sammie. The next time we have a craving for some dessert, we are going to hunt that trailer down!

A beautiful day for a food truck festival!

It Feels Great to Check Things Off the List--or is this nesting?

Today marks the completion of the 29th week of pregnancy and I am already a couple of weeks into my third trimester.  I cannot believe it.  One of the reasons I think this pregnancy has flown by is because we have been busy virtually EVERY weekend since we found out we were pregnant.   Last weekend was the first weekend we didn't have something going on and we were actually in town.  So, we made an aggressive to-do list that we have successfully tackled.  Maybe I am just nesting and want to get everything done and everything clean and organized, because it really feels so extremely exhilarating!


Some of the tasks checked off of our to-do list:

• A couple of months ago, our upstairs AC unit broke down and ending up leaking into the ceiling of one of our bedrooms (Luke's future room).  So, there was separation in the ceiling and a nice stain.  When family left last week, we contacted our favorite contractor and he finished the project up last weekend.  He also threw in a deal to fix a similar ceiling issue in our garage (from a hot water tank leak last year).  Check! 
• We went through our attic space (and every other favorite place to store items, such as under a guest bed :-) )and decided to get rid of anything we hadn't touched in a year.  This ended up being more stuff than we thought.  Also, we decided to get rid of an old mower and our old fridge that we were using as an extra in the garage.  Thanks to craigslist, we sold practically everything within a couple of days!  Drew is also going around to CD buyback shops on his lunch hour to sellback tons of old CDs.  This money from these sells will come in handy as we need to purchase some things for our baby girl. It feels SO good to get rid of stuff.  We also donated many things to Goodwill this past weekend and we plan on having a garage sale in a couple of weekends for whatever else that we haven't sold.  Check!
• Since the ceiling painting/repair was completed last weekend.  I contacted the carpet cleaning company to give our carpets a thorough cleaning.  That was completed yesterday and the carpets feel brand new.   Check! 
• We have Luke's new room empty and ready for his move-in.  We plan on transitioning him next weekend.  I purchased a new quilt for his bed that will fit the toddler mattress as well as his twin bed when he eventually moves into that.  Check!

There were even more tasks that we were able to check off, but I won't bore you with those details.  It feels so good to write these completed tasks down!   Now that we have these other tasks behind us, I am really excited about moving Luke into his new room after decorating and organizing it and then also doing the same with our new nursery. 

29-week Pregnancy Pics:

sorry for the bad lighting

A Trip to the Pumpkin Patch with Family

Last weekend, we had a lot of family visitors and thought it would be a great time to visit our favorite pumpkin patch.  Unfortunately, Luke wasn't in a picture mood, but it was still a fun adventure outing with the family.  My mom and dad, my brother, Jason, and sister-in-law, Emily, and their children, Brody and Kaylee, and my sister, Holly, and brother-in-law, Ryan, and their children, Lilly and Linnea, visited for the weekend. 

Luke runs through the beautiful flower garden.

We went to Sweet Berry Farms in Marble Falls.  It is free to attend, and, of course, to take advantage of their wonderful props for fall.  But, you have to pay for some of the extras.  For example, while we were there we had to partake of their homemade pumpkin ice cream and strawberry lemonade, even though we brought a picnic lunch.  But considering we had many adventures while we were there, that was not a lot to spend.  And, the ice cream and lemonade was definitely worth it!  We petted goats, horses and donkeys and even a cute baby donkey that was just born that weekend. 

My dad snapped a family photo of us while we were there.

Here is a slideshow of some of our adventures with the family at the pumpkin patch: